Tag Archives: Finishing Tips

THE ONE WEEK UMX A-5 VIGILANTE BUILD

Once in a long while my good Friend Brent (Corsair Nut) gets to spend some time in San Diego. We’ve been friends since we were kids as his dad used to work for my dad at one point in the shop. I have memories of him, his brother and I running around the back of the shop just doing what kids do. We reconnected about 10 or so years ago and pretty much picked up where we left off! So when he’s in town, there’s always some RC madness going on whether sporadic fly days or projects and it’s great! We’re always encouraging and pushing each other to go for that next project or running ideas off of each other on builds, etc. One thing about Brent, he is a master when it comes to working with foam and he’s shown me a lot of the techniques that I’ve been sharing with you. So, when he mentioned he was coming to town, we talked about teaming up on a quick Ultra Micro (UMX) jet. The subject? The A-5 Vigilante.

We actually planned this project (including sizing some drawings!) over a year ago on one of his previous trips. For me, I have always had this airplane in mind for a build as the proportions are perfect for an RC subject. It has a big wing, big tails and a nice wide fuselage which means good flying characteristics. For a big bird, landing gear are kind of an issue (they always are!), but for a UMX bird like this, that’s no matter. Fixed gear chicken legs here we come!

BTW, I have included the templates for the build further down in the article (no instructions), so if you’d like to give building one a shot, do it!

Now, I can’t say I was a huge help in the building process since our schedules really didn’t line up very well for the week he was here. Add to that that I was a hand down based on abroken finger I was 3 weeks into resulting from an ice hockey injury. I was fresh out of a cast but had a removable splint and couldn’t grip anything very well still even without theContinue reading →

Birth of a “Lion Cub!”

Well, it’s been a little while since my tease at kit bashing a Freewing Mirage into an IAI Kfir (“Kfir” is Hebrew for “Lion Cub”). We started with an assembly & flight review for the Freewing Mirage 2000 which out of the box flies awesome. However, the Kfir is such an awesome looking airplane and with canards and a little extra wing area we’ll add in the bashing process, I can only imagine that the airplane will fly even better! So, in this article, we’re covering the transformation process of turning this airplane into a Kfir and we’re using 3D printed parts as a part of that as well as employing some traditional building methods. Through this whole process we will be employing the foam refinishing method I covered in our How to Refinish a Foam Warbird series. I don’t plan to get into much detail about the foam prep work itself in this series as I want to focus on the kit bashing aspect to compliment the refinishing we did previously and use the next couple articles to go into more detail on painting, simple panel lines and weathering.

Now, one of the reasons that it’s been a little while is, in addition to of course a few distractions, is that I’ve been working out the 3D printed parts with a friend of mine. CAD modeling takes time and there were a number of parts that we ended up making. These include printing a new nose, the exhaust shroud and turkey feathers, the dorsal inlet, external wing tanks, lower ventral tank, and the afterburner cooling scoops and inlets on the fuselage. As a whole, we printed a total of 23 individual pieces for the conversion (many of the parts required multiple pieces to be printed).

The beauty is in the details…

As promised in my How to Repair Fiberglass and Fibgerglassed Parts article, here’s a little tutorial on some of the detail parts I had to re-scratch build while repairing my Mirage IIIRS earlier this year. These include some of the very distinctive pitot tubes and antennas that are exhibited on the nose section of the full-sized aircraft. In all the searching we did of the crash site when the airplane went in, the original parts were just nowhere to be found…a sacrifice to the three angry bushes that swallowed my airplane I suppose! Also, if you missed it, be sure to check out my coverage from the US Scale Masters Championships as I competed with my fully repaired Mirage and somehow in the process came out of the competition finishing 1st in Expert being named the Grand National Champion! What an amazing weekend! It was such a great event with a wonderful and very talented group of scale modelers, I can’t wait to go back!

CHOOSING THE RIGHT MATERIALS

When we talk about detail parts, we need to talk about materials selection. Obviously, any materials can be used, but when dealing with parts that are protruding from an airplane, we need parts with stiffness and resilience to repeated abuse. Let’s face it, these parts areContinue reading →

Decals, Vinyl and Paint Masks…oh my!

The topic of aircraft markings and making decals was touched on a little bit in my How to Refinish a Foam Warbird series and the request to expand on it a bit has come up a few time since then. So, here’s a bit more extensive walk through of my process of making and painting markings for my airplanes.

Color and Markings are one thing that I’m very particular about on my scale models. I’m so particular in fact that I will usually make my own decals and paint masks as opposed to outsourcing. Ultimately I do this because I actually enjoy the challenge of it (when it’s going well of course) and this gives me full control of the sizes of all of the markings since it usually takes multiple iterations before having everything just the right size. Also, my preference is to paint whatever markings I can and in the case that the markings may be too small to paint, I will move to waterslide decals. In some cases, I will even use a combination of paint (or vinyl in the case of my “Lady Alice”) and decals to create a single marking. Obviously, there are always limitations when doing your own markings and so in the case I just don’t have the capability to make what I need, then it’s time to outsource.

Since I’m a scale fanatic, my goal in making markings is always to recreate markings Continue reading →

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Hey guys, here's Ep4 in our Foam Kit Bashing series! In this episode, we talk about how to paint camouflage and apply the markings. We cover the whole painting process along with a discussion on airbrushes, the painting methodology and technique, and the application of the markings.
SEE FULL ARTICLE►http://thercgeek.com/kitbashing ... See more

In this installment of our foam kit bashing series, we talk about how to paint a camouflage using an airbrush onto our Kfir and apply all of the markings.

Check out this beautiful Lady Alice P-51 built by Sascha from Germany. He was inspired by our foam warbird refinishing series (thercgeek.com/refinishafoamy) to refinish his FMS P-51 (his first attempt at anything like this). Beautiful work Sascha!! #awesome#inspiring ... See more

SEE FULL VIDEO►https://youtu.be/9BHqz1Sasx0
Alright guys, here's the final flight vid from Warbirds & Classics. This OV-10 Bronco was a really nice model and as I understand it, the builder/pilot modeled the airplane he flew in the USAF. Unfortunately it only flew this one time through the weekend and it was in extremely difficult conditions. It took a great deal for the pilot to just land the airplane safely! ... See more

Here are a few pics from the E-flite Cessna 150 flights on Saturday. I'm looking forward to flying the airplane again! Thanks Eric Sacco for manning the camera for me. I'm working on the review now, which will hopefully post in a few weeks. I have our next Kit Bashing installment coming first though. :) Horizon HobbySpektrumRC ... See more